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Since our Lord Jesus Christ was without sin (for He committed no
sin, He Who took away the sin of the world, nor was there any deceit
found in His mouth) He was not subject to death, since death came
into the world through sin. He dies, therefore, because He took on
Himself death on our behalf, and He makes Himself an offering to the
Father for our sakes. For we had sinned against Him, and it was
meet that He should receive the ransom for us, and that we should thus
he delivered from the condemnation. God forbid that the blood of the
Lord should have been offered to the tyrant. Wherefore death
approaches, and swallowing up the body as a bait is transfixed on the
hook of divinity, and after tasting of a sinless and life-giving
body, perishes, and brings up again all whom of old he swallowed up.
For just as darkness disappears on the introduction of light, so is
death repulsed before the assault of life, and brings life to all, but
death to the destroyer.
Wherefore, although He died as man and His Holy Spirit was severed
from His immaculate body, yet His divinity remained inseparable from
both, I mean, from His soul and His body, and so even thus His
one hypostasis was not divided into two hypostases. For body and soul
received simultaneously in the beginning their being in the subsistence
of the Word, and although they were severed from one another by
death, yet they continued, each of them, having the one subsistence
of the Word. So that the one subsistence of the Word is alike the
subsistence of the Word, and of soul and body. For at no time had
either soul or body a separate subsistence of their own, different from
that of the Word, and the subsistence of the Word is for ever one,
and at no time two. So that the subsistence of Christ is always one.
For, although the soul was separated from the body topically, yet
hypostatically they were united through the Word.
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